The way metals are recycled
Steel, aluminum, and other types of metal are very common materials found across the globe. Every year they’re produced in vast quantities and used in multiple applications. The usefulness of metal was discovered thousands of years ago. And since then, technology has combined metals, making them stronger and more reliable than ever.Longevity, malleability, conductivity, and strength are the reasons they have been used over the years to provide us with many of the goods we use today. Various metals can be found in cars, computers, buildings, utensils, etc. Metals can remain viable products, even decades after they’re discarded.
Metals can be recycled indefinitely without losing any of their properties over time. One of the most recycled metals is aluminum. Like most metals we use, aluminum is an ore. The bauxite, a reddish clay-like ore, rich in aluminum compounds, is mined for the metal. The tricky thing about processing the aluminum is that it only exists in combination with other elements, usually oxygen.
When combined with oxygen, aluminum forms an extremely hard metal called alumina. To free aluminum, the alumina is stripped of its oxygen. The alumina is placed into molten pots of salt. Then, an electric current is run through the liquid that separates the aluminum from the oxygen. This takes a lot of energy, thus making aluminum a sensible metal to recycle. The process of recycling aluminum is the same, only it’s already oxygenated, and only needs impurities removed. Only 4% of the energy used to make aluminum is used when recycling.
Steel is another popular metal to recycle. It is the most recycled metal in the United States. Every year, steel dominated the recycling mix due to the steel industry recycling huge amounts of scrap steel from cars, appliances, buildings, bridges, etc. Today, all steel products are made with some recycled steel in them. Steele is mined just like aluminum. The essential ingredient in steel is iron ore.
The iron needs to be combined with oxygen, or with other elements like sulfur or carbon. Then, the iron must be smelted and reduced/stripped of its oxygen to get rid of the iron. It takes massive amounts of energy to reduce iron oxides. The reduction takes place in a super heated blast furnace, where a chemical reaction takes place and the iron is freed from the oxygen. The freed iron is then used to make the steel. Like aluminum, a great amount of energy is used to produce the steel, so recycling makes perfect sense.
Steel recycling follows the same path of aluminum recycling. Steel is melted in a furnace then poured into iron casters that continuously roll and flatten the steel. Recycled steel can be used in any application that the original steel was used. No matter how many times metal is recycled, it never loses its strength. Other metals such as copper and cast iron follow this same process. Coppers high conductivity makes it more valuable to recycling plants, where some pay over $1 per pound for clean copper.
Tags: aluminium, metal recycling, steel recycling
